The craziest 3D printed scale model in the world

When I entered our production facilities a few months ago, I was totally blown away by a small scale replica of a gas plant. It was a project that was handled by my German colleagues of our AMS (Additive Manufacturing Solutions) department. The real thing was built by Linde AG in Chile. Linde AG is a world leading gases and engineering company represented by approximately 48,000 employees in 100 countries.

This is truly one of the craziest 3D printed scale models I have ever seen. The model has all the details of the actual system and has an overal size ofÂ 1300mm x 1000mm. The highest part of the model is 750mm. Because it was so huge, the production team had to build it in 7 segments and then glue it together. All the parts were produced in polyamide using laser sintering and spray painted in silver afterwards.

Â The scale model is now located at Linde HQ (Munich, Germany) in the entrance hall of the top managers offices.

Â I wanted to share this with you to put the spotlight on the amazing work of our production team at Materialise. The same production team you can count on when you upload and order your 3D models at i.materialise.

Photo courtesy of Materialise

Photo courtesy of Materialise

Photo courtesy of Materialise

Photo courtesy of Materialise

Photo courtesy of Materialise

Mike

Wow! I would not have wanted to be a model maker before 3D printing. This would have taken ages to build!

donovan

Is this one model, if so what size is it? Or is it a combintion of mutltiple 3d printed model assembled into a larger piece.

incredible. this is fantastic model. are there any statistics available about the data ? for exemple – how many polygons did the whole model have ? that is an interesting bit to know, or how big were the files ? what software was this assembly originally modelled in ? etc, etc.
thank you !

Guest

I work for a company building water treatment plants which are very similar to the model above. I am unable to convert the revit drawing into a format that will 3D print. The drawing is too complicated and the software keeps crashing. Is there a better way to do it?

Namrata Gupta

I work for a company building water treatment plants which are very similar to the model above. I am unable to convert the revit drawing into a format that will 3D print. The drawing is too complicated and the software keeps crashing. Is there a better way to do it? Also, what things were modified to be able to get this print? Are the tanks and pipes solid?

http://i.materialise.com/ Franky De Schouwer

Hi Namrata, this project was done by another division of Materialise, AMS or Additive Manufacturing Services. You can reach them at projects (at) materialise.be.They can probably tell you more about it.